Transitioning from a food counter to a full-fledged restaurant can be a nerve-racking move — a leap of faith that assumes not only that your hard-earned regulars will follow to your new spot, but also that you will be able to convert a whole new group of regulars. A pair of Bay Area Peruvian restaurants have opened in the past year that show both the “make” and “break” sides of this proposition.

Husband-and-wife owners Matt and Daniela Khadivian were running a nearby coffee shop until Starbucks moved in across the street and they were forced to diversify their offerings. The pair turned to recipes that Daniela had learned growing up in Lima, Peru, cooking mostly things they could make in their cafe’s half-kitchen, like banana-leaf-wrapped tamales and easy protein-and-rice plates. Soon, Peruvian food was what they were known for, and last spring they moved into this 70-seat restaurant down the road. It’s been busy ever since.

All the Peruvian cuisine standards are done well. They serve a beautiful ceviche, with silky hunks of raw sea bass in a bright and tangy lime-juice and rocoto chile sauce, accompanied by soft sweet potatoes, nutty toasted corn and smooth nubs of hominy. Fingers of yuca are fried with a light touch and come with a kicky chile sauce. And then there’s lomo saltado, a lovely melange of fork-tender stir-fried beef strips whose juices mingle on the plate with garlic rice and fries that are just on the right side of greasy.

The menu is long, but don’t let it put you off from experimenting with some of the lesser-known Peruvian dishes. Papa a la huancaina can be an odd dish to the Western palate — warm boiled potatoes doused in a cheese-and-saltine-cracker sauce — but here it’s obvious it’s just another riff on potato salad. The comforting arroz tapado has beef in a sauce redolent of raisins and olives. Dishes featuring spaghetti, soy sauce and chimichurri show off Peruvian cuisine’s international influences.

The Pescado a lo Macho at El Mono in El Cerrito.

The Pescado a lo Macho at El Mono in El Cerrito.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

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The Pescado a lo Macho at El Mono in El Cerrito.

The Pescado a lo Macho at El Mono in El Cerrito.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

2 Peruvian joints grow into restaurants; 1 takes off

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If budget permits, order the pescado a lo macho, an off-menu piece de resistance in which whole fried sea bass — head and all — sits upright on a bed of seafood chowder flavored with Peru’s subtle, canary-yellow aji amarillo pepper. With rice it’s a generous portion for $30, and easily serves two.

Service is friendly and the room is warm, decked out in orange paint, Peruvian sculptures and furry alpaca blankets that require a lot of willpower to refrain from petting (signs on the walls request that guests show restraint). There’s a patio for warm East Bay days, and the restaurant pays attention to small details, like serving Peruvian beer in frosted mugs.

El Mono’s critical and popular success is all the more remarkable considering that Matt Khadivian had never eaten Peruvian food before he met Daniela in 2008 — and neither had run a restaurant before this, though Khadivian’s family owns a string of Persian restaurants in Los Angeles.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

The exterior of El Mono in El Cerrito.

The exterior of El Mono in El Cerrito.

Sometimes, things just work out.

I wish I could say the same about San Francisco’s newest Peruvian effort, El Aji, the 7-month-old brick-and-mortar from the owners of Cholo Soy.

Cholo Soy was a lunch counter hidden inside a mini-mall at 19th and Mission streets that served some of the best ceviche in town: The original was vibrant and fresh-tasting, and there was an even better version flavored with aji amarillo. The restaurant’s menu was rounded out by simple meat-and-starch plates that showed the range of Peruvian cooking.

So I had high hopes for chef-owner Yeral Caldas’ expansion to bigger digs last fall. But alas, El Aji is not Cholo Soy. The new restaurant, also on Mission Street but near Cesar Chavez, is a little bigger than the mall counter but has even less personality — an unadorned room with too-bright fluorescent lighting, no music and some halfhearted blown-up photos of vegetables on the walls.

I’ll forgive a lot of weird atmosphere if the food’s good, but here came the real heartbreak: Somewhere, Caldas has lost his way. The beef in the lomo saltado was way too tough; the mealy fries tasted like they had come out of a bag. Papa a la huancaina was nothing but salty sauce atop undercooked potatoes.

And the ceviche, which smelled and tasted uncomfortably fishy, lacked all of the verve and life of the previous versions. I went back a few more times in hopes of recapturing the magic of Cholo Soy, but kept coming up short. When it’s good, raw fish is such a treat — but when it’s bad, it’s nothing but rotten.